Microgrid battery and thermal storage for improved renewable penetration and curtailment

As renewable energy becomes a larger fraction of the overall energy mix in the US, energy storage technology and its efficient deployment will be increasingly necessary. This work examines a small-scale microgrid which supplies renewable energy to a single building with both electric (battery) and thermal (hot-water) energy storage. The building contains a mix of apartments and one commercial kitchen, and electrical consumption and demand hot water profiles are developed from historical residential meter data and models for restaurant activity. Renewable energy from a PV array and wind turbines is dispatched to the load or is stored for later use, and the microgrid performance is measured by the renewable energy penetration, renewable curtailment, and system cost over time. Modeling results indicate that replacing some electrical storage capacity with thermal storage for demand hot-water has the potential to decrease cost by 8%, increasing renewable penetration by 7%, and decrease renewable curtailment by 11%.